At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's, From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels.
On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery:reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution, Yet it is not a mystery novel,Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes.
MARK TWAIN"s ironic little novel, Pudd"nhead Wilson, is laid on the banks of the Mississippi in the first half of the 1800s. It concerns itself with, among other things the use of fiugexprinting to solve the mystery of a murder. But Pudd"nhead Wilsion is not a mystery novel. The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder and has mote than an inkling of how it will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States.Even a man who.fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a puddenhead. Such was the reputation acquired by Wilson, the young ,would-be lawyer in the Missoun frontier town of Dawson"s Landing. But Wilson eventually made his detractors appear as puddenheads themselves.
INTRODUCTION,BY LANGSTON HUGHES
A WHISPER TO THE READER
PUDD"NHEAD WINS HIS NAME
DRISCOLL SPARES HIS SLAVES
ROXY PLAYS A SHREWD TRICK
THE WAYS OF THE CHANGELINGS
THE TWINS THRILL DAWSON"S LANDING
SWIMMING IN GLORY
THE UNKNOWN NYMPH
MARSE TOM TRAMPLES HIA CHANCE
TOM PRACTISES SYCOPHANCY
THE NYMPH REVEALED
THE NYMPH REVEALED
PUDD"NHEAD"S STARTLING DISCOVERY
THE SHAME OF JUDGE DRISCOLL
TOM STARES AT RUIN
ROXANA INSISTS UPON REFORM
THE ROBBER ROBBED
SOLD DOWN THE RIVER
"THE JUDGE UTTERS DIRE PROPHECY
TOXANA COMMANDS
THE PROPHECY REALIZED
THE MURDERER CHUCKLES
DOOM